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Old 9 Dec 19, 07:41 PM  
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Talking A Quick Christmassy Trip To DLP - Complete

Traveling & Vienna Dream Castle

Welcome to my Disneyland Paris Trip Report! We went for three nights on the 30th November until the 3rd December, it was wonderfully christmasy, very cold but all around great.
We went just me and my mum if you want to read the pre-trip report it is here :

https://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/sho... php?t=1152249

If not thats fine, I don’t blame you. The reason we went on our trip was because we are true Disney fanatics and couldn’t wait until our September 2020 holiday! We are going as a family of 7 next year and no one else fancied extra Disney lol… Now that we are back I wanted to write a mini trip report on our holiday! We had a great time and I still can't get the Disney Christmas parade song out of my head!

We went out on a easyJet flight from Manchester to CDG at 16:25, we had a glass of fizz and bought a few toiletries and then boarded the flight. The flight time was only 1 hour and it was a really easy, refreshing flight- nothing like flying to Florida! We had to check in our hand luggage which was a little annoying as we hoped to speed through the airport in order to get the 19:57 TGV train. We managed this with ease anyways, we came in at terminal 2 which is the same as the train station. The Train journey was so easy, it took 9 mins, I would highly recommend this to anyone flying. It cost €19 per ticket though, defo not cost effective if there are more than 2 of you! Ive heard good things about shuttles if this is the case.



Once we arrived at the station at Disney we realised just how close we were! We had one night booked at Vienna Dream Castle Hotel off site. We found the bus stop and got on board an extremely crowded bus! Our plan was to check in, drop our bags and head to Disney village and get something to eat! We checked in to our room, they hadn’t split the beds up and we had requested a twin room. They quickly sent someone up though and they sorted our room out. The room was nice, but fairly underwhelming- just not a lot going on!
We got back on to the bus to Disney village!



Once in Disney village I felt all magical, nothing like the Disney touch! I got very excited when we passed world of Disney! We had decided to go to the Rainforest Cafe, an old classic for us. We used to go there on all our family trips when I was younger!
We queued for a couple of mins and we were seated at our table, it was busy but no so bad, it was about 21:30 when we sat down. We both ordered a glass of wine and the chicken and beef fajitas combo! Pretty expensive fajitas at €26 each, they were absolutely lovely but a little cold! We didn’t mind as we both hadn’t eaten for ages! Not bad for Disney food, I hadn’t heard good things before we went so my expectations were set low.



After dinner we went for a little look around in the world of Disney, I couldn’t resist. Unfortunately it was just after the fireworks so the shop was so so busy! It also meant that when we got the bus back to the hotel that was crowded too! We were both pretty glad we were moving to Newport Bay the following day so we could walk everywhere! We saw the Newport bay all lit up at night as well, this made us even more excited.



Then we made our way to bed and were asleep by midnight- ready for a busy day of Disney in the morning!

I will be posting our full first day soon Thanks for reading !

Edited at 03:50 PM.
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Old 9 Dec 19, 09:18 PM  
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First Full Day & Moving to Newport Bay

I set an alarm for us bright and early the next day! We were up and out by 8:15, I found this easy… mum not so much!
We hopped on another busy coach from Vienna Dream Castle to Disney Bus Stop. Just for those considering offiste- there are 5 hotels that share a bus and it does take a little while and you usually have to stand! We decided to wait for a bus to Newport bay. It took about 10 mins to arrive- it was far less crowded than the Vienna bus.

When we pulled up to Newport bay we thought it looked beautiful, it was a cut above Vienna Dream castle. It was beautifully decorated with Christmas decs too! ( Vienna dream castle had one Christmas tree and that was it… other than that you wouldn’t know it was Christmas ).
We were told we had to go through an airport security style system, put our bags through scanners and ourselves through detectors. It didn’t take long and we didn’t mind as its better Safe than sorry in our opinion!



Once inside my mum checked us in, only one person is aloud to go in line for check in, this could just be at peak times? I grabbed us some free chocolate coins, look out for these if you stay they’re delicious. Our room wasn’t going to be ready until 3pm, which we expected, so we checked in our luggage and headed to the parks with our new magic passes, braving the cold & rainy weather!


We went to Disneyland park first and took in the beauty of main street in all its Christmas glory! There was classical Christmas songs playing and it had a great atmosphere. We headed to the Deli on main street for a small breakfast. I had a chocolate croissant, coffee and juice and mum had the same- but a muffin instead of a juice. They were fab, could’ve eaten a few more lol.



First up of the day was to head to space mountain to grab a fastpass for me- the ride was only open for the 1st December before shutting for maintenance for god knows how long! I got a return time of 11:40. - we got into the park for 10am so fast passes did go fairly fast within the first half hour! We decided our first ride of the trip would be Buzz Lightyear… this was by far our favourite ride. I scored better than mum… this wouldn’t be there first time lol.



We then headed to its a small world, the ride queue was half an hour, it was a good ride and we thought we had to do it for old times sake ( we aren’t new to Disney… its a small world is my dads least favourite song… I wonder why ). After the ride I headed back to Space mountain for my fastpass- mum gave this a miss, she doesn’t do big drops and upside down! I thought it was fantastic!



We then did pirates of the Caribbean ride and then we managed to catch the 13:20 Christmas parade- this was fantastic. Loved every second of it, we don’t usually do parades in America as we are all about rides, next time we go I will be watching them!



Then over to the studios park- Our first stop was at ratatouille to get fastpasses, we had a return time of 17:10 - we had never been on this ride before! After this we had some time to kill before our 14:30 reservation at Bistrot Chez Remy. We squeezed in the Backlot tram tour… we cut it very fine and made it to our reservation for 14:40- they didn’t seat us for about 10 mins anyway!



The Service was fairly terrible in the restaurant… we didn’t get seen to for about 20 mins and then our waiter was really un-friendly. He barley said a word, it didn’t seem like a language barrier either as he wasn’t talking to any of the tables around. It was nice to get inside and warm up though as it had been about -2 and raining all day! We both ordered the same: carrot soup, Steak chips & ratatouille and then a chocolate mouse. The food was pretty good. The steak was a little tough- I had the chefs sauce… it was ok, I wouldn’t have it again though! The dessert was huge but lovely- we didn’t finish these because they were so rich. Overall I thought It was nice but I wouldn’t go again- I certainly wouldn’t want to Pay OOP as it really was pretty expensive- Oh I forgot to mention we had booked with free half board !



Once we had finished dinner we went to the 16:25 showing of the Mickey’s Big Band Show. It was just fantastic. The Singers and dancers were 1st class and the appearance of the classic disney characters made it extra special and great for kids! Again- it was nice to sit inside a warm theatre for a while. We found with this show we didnt have to queue at all, unlike frozen that we experienced In the days to come.

We then returned to the Ratatouille ride for our fastpasses- we were pretty underwhelmed with this. It is aimed at kids really. Our main gripe with it was how short it was, I wouldn’t queue for this without fast passes, unless you have young children! After this we went back to Newport bay to get set up in our room as we thought it may be busy after the park closed ( we were right ).



We then headed back in to the cold and wet and went to the Disneyland Hotel. We wanted to visit Cafe Fantasia as we had read about the Glow-tinis. In the end I ordered a glass of wine but mum did have a red glowtini, very cool. We had another glass of wine each whilst we waited for the 9pm fireworks! The Disneyland Hotel is gorgeous, we both agreed we'd love to stay there at some point! We watched the fireworks, which were fantastic, and then realised it had been a really busy day and if we were to make extra magic time in the morning we needed to get some sleep!



After a quick, and very busy, stop in macdonalds we walked home to the hotel munching on chicken nuggets! We had a great first day, we took it fairly slow but got loads in!

Will be updating with Day 3 tomorrow!
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Old 10 Dec 19, 11:54 AM  
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Great first day! I'm glad I'm not alone with Ratatouille, it's ok but definitely not worth queuing for. We only tend to do it now if we have a fastpass or using the single rider queue.
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Old 10 Dec 19, 12:59 PM  
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Originally Posted by HappyPanda View Post
Great first day! I'm glad I'm not alone with Ratatouille, it's ok but definitely not worth queuing for. We only tend to do it now if we have a fastpass or using the single rider queue.
Thanks for reading ! Glad someone agrees ... thought maybe I was being harsh haha
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Old 10 Dec 19, 09:57 PM  
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Day three & Extra magic hours…

Today was a very early start… I was up at 6:40… in hindsight I probs didn't need to be up quite so early! I got ready first and mum followed half an hour or so later. We wanted to get to Starbucks before extra magic time as I don’t function well without a morning coffee. Side note- really cheeky but Newport bay don’t provide any tea, coffee or a kettle- Vienna dream castle did provide these and it was half the price! Just something to note here…

Newport Bay in the early hours... it is beautiful.

We left the hotel just after 8am and popped into Starbucks. We ordered an orange juice each- these are freshly squeezed and lovely and I had a coffee to start the day! We sat for about 10 mins before heading to the Studios park to join the queue. It didn’t take long to get through the ticket machines at 8:30, maybe 5 mins or so. We had a plan to head to crushes coaster and ride this with a small queue as there are no fast pass options.



It took a lot of convincing to get mum on this ride, we queued for around 25 mins, after listening to mum scream the whole way round we came off and she admitted it wasn’t so bad! We ended up going down the biggest drop backwards- she didn’t like that haha, it is luck of the draw which way you face going down as the cart spins! We liked the ride and said we would do it again but it was another one we found fairly short! Wouldn’t want to queue over an hour again.

I then did Tower of Terror about 9am, it had a 10 min queue. This was one I had to do on my own, I love this ride and think it may be my favourite! I think it may drop more than the Florida one!



We then came out of the park and headed back to the hotel to get some breakfast. I had several helpings of the Buffett- the food was really good! They give you very small sized plates though. After breakfast we headed back into the parks.

This is a bad pic of the Buffett food really... and makes the plates look big haha

We headed back to the Studios park with the plan to do the Frozen Musical show. We then learnt you had to get in the queue very early for this so we had missed the showing we wanted to see and people were already queuing for the one an hour and a half later! Instead we went to see the 11am showing of the Motor action show! This was fantastic! Really recommend this highly.



After the show we went over to the Disneyland park- all in all I’m with the popular opinion that there isn’t loads to do in the Studios park! Especially with rocking rollercoaster down at the moment too! We took a few photos on mainstreet and with the castle- it was clearer skies today! Then we headed to Thunder mountain to get fast passes, Our return time was 14:15. In the meantime we rode phantom manor- we found this really quite spooky! Not one to do if you have young kids or kids who get scared easily, its defo not as tame as the American one!
We had a quick browse in the shop near by- I eyed up a jumper I wanted at an eye watering price of €45, I would buy this later in the trip though oops.



After our quick browse we went to join the snow ride queue, it is a nice little ride. Again though very short- not one to queue a long time for unless you have small children.
We returned back to Thunder mountain to do our fastpasses! We loved this ride, just as we remembered although mum said it was more in the dark than she thought! You cant beat thunder mountain, its a classic.



On the way out of the park to grab some lunch we got two fast passes for Buzz lightyear. We had a return time of 16:00. We went to Starbucks for lunch I had the Mac and cheese- which I would really recommend and I think mum had a muffin and a hot chocolate. After warming up we headed back for our fast pass- we still had to queue about half an hour for this with a fast pass- I think they were having some difficulties with it! I got a score of 249,600 this time! I was very happy with this.



Afterwards I did a bit of shopping, picked up a simba mug and a keyring, and then we waited for the Disney’s Stars on Parade. This was fantastic. I stood at the end of mainstreet round the loop near the gate where the floats go in once they have finished going down the street. This is a really good view and seems to be a lot less crowded- though you will find people will move there once they’ve seen it from another angle before hand.



Then we headed back into the Disneyland hotel for a cheeky glass of wine and a chance to warm up! We were waiting to go back down to the Disneyland Park for the Illuminations again. We stood further away for these this time which I think was better. There are less people directly in front of you!

We did a little bit more browsing as we passed through Disney village on the way back to our hotel after the fireworks. Mum bought a little Christmas tree decoration. Back at the hotel we changed and freshened up as we were out tonight for the Buffalo Bills show. Before hand we had a quick drink at The BillyBobs country bar in Disney Village. We both agreed this was great and we wished we had stayed there all night listening to the live music!



We had booked into the 21:30 showing of Buffalo Bills free with our meal plan. We arrived at 21:00 got allocated our seats and given a blue team cowboy hat! We pre-ordered a bottle of wine to take to our seats and after watching a couple of cheesy songs we were shown to our seats. Blue team are seated last so we thought we had the worst seats. Quite the opposite though! We had the best seats, right in the centre in the middle row!

We enjoyed our night very much. It was something different, although I’m not sure we would do it again. The food was good but very very meat based. The service on the whole was good apart from one waiter who kept trying to take our wine! And the show was very random and we had no idea what was going on…. Would recommend going as a family though for sure.



We came out of the show about 11pm. Disney Village was all closed and it was deserted. We walked back to the hotel- very tired and ready for bed! We were both sound asleep by midnight.

We walked 28,000 steps- I slept very well that night lol.
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Old 14 Dec 19, 03:48 PM  
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Final Day & Flying Home

On our final day we felt so worn out so didn’t set our alarm to go off until 8am… I still felt very tired when it went off! After getting up and ready we went down to breakfast, where coffee was the first thing on the agenda. I had a couple of helpings of the breakfast buffet- first with eggs, bacon, sausage and beans and then on to a breakfast ‘pudding’ of crepes and mini pastries- not the healthiest but so delicious! After breakfast we checked out and checked our cases in to the luggage facility ready to collect later on in the day… When passing through the lobby we picked up a couple more chocolate coins for later!

We put on our coats, gloves, hats and scarfs and got ready for one last Disney day in the freezing cold. We headed into Disneyland park with the intention of getting Fast passes for thunder mountain, instead the wait time was posted at 10 mins so we decided to queue. We loved this ride!
We went to the shop opposite where I had seen the Simba jumper the day before and I caved and bought it! Mum also got a t-shirt for my sister as it had been her birthday the day before!
With our new purchases in hand we went over to Indiana Jones Ride. It took us a really long time to find this- for some reason we couldn’t get our head round the map lol. The wait time was 5 mins which was great as I was riding on my own. Again I really enjoyed the ride but it was very short! Wouldn’t want to queue for more than half an hour though.



We nipped to the Studios with the intention to see The Frozen show. We grabbed a quick coffee and a cookie then joined the queue- we were the second to last people let into the queue and this was 40 mins before the show time. If you want to see this you need to queue outside for a long time!
We thought it was quite average. It is certainly aimed at kids so id give it a miss as an older family/ couple etc. The Elsa wasn’t particularly great either.
In hindsight we wouldn’t have done this show !
We then headed to see the surprise Micky show- which again we lasted about 5 mins and decided to leave… It was cold outside and we didn’t fancy watching another kiddie show! I would recommend both of these though with smaller kids.

We decided we would go back to the Disneyland park and watch the Christmas parade Again. We had a better view this time where the parade came out! It’s such a festive thing to do- the parades may have been my trip highlight. We had a wander about the park, all the rides were posting big wait times so we went to see the dragon in the castle. We had never done this before and id recommend it! It looks very real.



At this point we were just killing time really. We both enjoyed Mickey’s big band show so much that we decided we would do this again. We stopped in the main shopping/food bit in the studios for a quick soft drink before heading to the theatre. We also had another stroll around before the show.


The show was delayed about 10 mins but just as fab as before. Again another highlight for us! We had done everything we wanted to do by now and it was getting close to 4pm. We had to be on the 17:52 train so we decided to say goodbye to the parks.



We decided to go to the earl of sandwich for some food. We both ordered the Chipotle Chicken avocado sandwich with a drink and some crisps each. They were lovely sandwiches. I think the meals were €12 each, not bad for what we got… although it was just a subway style meal really.

Afterwards we walked back to the Newport bay, collected our cases and found somewhere to sit down. We stayed for about half an hour rather than waiting at the cold train station. At 17:20 we said goodbye to Newport bay and our Disney trip! We got our tickets for the TGV at the station. A note if anyone is getting this train- they don’t check your tickets anywhere and you are able to buy them on the train. We could’ve gotten away with it both times which is annoying at €19 per ticket each way!



Anyways we got through airport security very quickly and then we sat and waited for our plane. It was running about half an hour behind but we still landed back in Manchester at 9pm as the flight time was only an hour.

Overall we had a great trip! We both agreed we would go again but probably not any time soon. Although we would like to take the boys at some point… maybe ill be writing another DLP report next Christmas

My highlights were the Parades, The Big Band show, Cafe Fantasia and the Buzz light year ride ( we did this three times but I think I only mentioned it twice… cant remember when else we did it oops).

My lows (nothing was bad) were: Bistrot Chez Remy- as I had heard such good things. The Ratatouille ride - id never done this and found it a bit meh! And maybe the weather, it felt very festive but I do enjoy the Florida heat!

Thanks for bearing with me and reading my trip report!
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Old 14 Dec 19, 05:10 PM  
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Great trip report!

I love DLP Christmas season, it’s so magical.
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Old 14 Dec 19, 08:30 PM  
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Sounds like you had a lovely few days
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Old 14 Dec 19, 11:18 PM  
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Yes thanks! It was great
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Old 16 Dec 19, 09:56 PM  
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Great report! Thanks.
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